It started with tea coziesa practical solution for keeping the tea pot from cooling faster than the tea could be sipped. Then came cozies for other hot and cold beverages in mugs, cans, bottles and disposable cups. Now there are cozies for all sorts of thingsfrom fruit (Web-Letter #34) to stethoscopes (Web-Letter #39) to electronic devices. The juxtaposition of electronics with handmade coverings is charming and all of our hard working portable technologylaptops, iPods, cell phones, and Kindlescan benefit from a cozy extra layer of protection.

When I received my Kindle as a holiday gift, I was so excited! I immediately wanted a cool cover (it comes with no cover, and feels very naked). Then I wanted to see what I could do with it besides read a book, magazine, or newspaper. Lo and behold, I discovered that I could load a PDF or DOC file onto the Kindle quite easily, and store whatever I wanted. My first PDF upload was, no surprise here, a knitting pattern. If you’ve seen a Kindle’s display, you know it has a few limitations. I quickly discovered that the PDF loaded very nicely, but large photographs threw it off. Text, charts and graphs display with no problemthings that are nice to store in the Kindle in case you lose your paper copy of a pattern!

I love having all my patterns on an electronic device. That way I can reference them anytime I want. And it sits in my knitting bag most of the time anyway, so it’s a perfect combination of technology and hobby. Oh, and it has a cool handknit cover now too.

Montera is a single-ply yarn of a lovely blend of 50% llama and 50% wool. It is soft yet strong and knits up quickly at a gauge of 31⁄24 sts per inch. Montera is available in 100 gram hanks in 35 solid colors and 13 heathered colors.

From warm winter sweaters to bright hats, fair-isle mitts and home accessories, Montera is a wonderful soft, durable and time-tested yarn.

Susan's Kindle cover is worked back and forth in garter stitch for a little ways, then stitches are cast on using the cable cast-on method at the beginning of 2 rows. Markers are placed, then double-decreases are worked at the markers to create the mitred look. The beginning cast on edge is then folded in half and sewn. Quite a unique and interesting construction!